Texas driver lands extremely rare horn honk citation from miffed deputy riding a motorcycle
Marshall Petre says he was entering Highway 75 around McKinney, Texas, just northeast of Dallas. He claims that he didn’t notice any indication of any emergency, clogged traffic, or unusual circumstances. He checked his mirror. As he went to complete his merge, a Sheriff’s deputy on a motorcycle came “swinging past him.”
“He didn’t have lights, sirens, nothing – he was just driving down the road,” Petre told CBS TEXAS.
The driver was so unnerved by the event – asserting he could have seriously injured the deputy – that Petre thought to speak to the deputy when the biker exited the highway.
The conversation with the deputy didn’t go well.
Petre pulled up behind the deputy and honked his horn to get the deputy’s attention. When the deputy approached, Petre asked if there was a reason for his speeding. With hardly a response, the deputy walked back to his bike and rode off without providing his name or badge number. Petre yelled after the officer.
It didn’t end there. After the prickly encounter, the deputy returned to the intersection, having experienced a change of heart. However, it wasn’t what the driver expected.
The deputy asked for Petre’s license.
Petre again recorded.
When Petre asks why the officer needed his license, the deputy responds that the driver misused his horn. The deputy claimed that he was attempting to catch up to a vehicle and Petre pulled him off his active position.
Police-issued citations for horn misuse are extremely rare in Texas
CBS TEXAS reviewed citation data from 2022. In Texas, of the 3.9 million traffic violations issued that year, only eight of them flagged illegal use of a horn.
Not only did the officer issue a $189 violation for horn misuse, but he also arrested Petre and impounded his pickup over a separate unpaid speeding ticket issued in Dallas. It turns out Dallas County had just issued the warrant.
Petre says he spent 16 hours in jail and forked over $600 to get his truck out of the impound lot.
CBS TEXAS entered a public information request to obtain the citation information plus the deputy’s body camera footage. The footage could confirm whether the deputy was indeed pursuing a vehicle as part of his official duties or operating his department-issued motorcycle dangerously without cause.
